Sorry about that! BTW, are you “Sam” now? I’m confused by the name change.

Ryan

I’m a huge race fan myself (F1 mostly). Years ago I drove a racing style go kart and had a blast. I did learn that dragging a kart from track to track would eat up lots of time and lots of money. I didn’t think that would be the thing for me.

Evernote is a great tool where I enter all of my wild ideas. I have an Idea Incubator file that I put them all in. After thinking about them for a while the good ones get a sub folder where I continue gathering information and make plans to keep the good idea moving forward.

Six years ago, I tried a 5-month mini-retirement just hanging out in Brazil and training capoeira. Not even halfway in, I got bored and antsy because 1) I felt like I wasn’t contributing anything to the world; and 2) I knew it wasn’t sustainable because I was living off savings and not generating any income.

…which is why I’m now living in Brazil, training capoeira, AND building a business that’s adding value to the lives of thousands of English students around the world. Pretty much ideal!

I’m trying to figure out how “going into the unknown” jives with “buy now blogging.” Should you have a monetization plan sketched out from the beginning… OR, if you’re doing something that you are absolutely SURE has mega-value, should you keep going even without an idea of how to turn that value into revenue, because the revenue will likely follow (somehow) if you were indeed correct about the mega-value? Not sure if that made sense… it just seems contradictory and I’m trying to wrap my head around it.

Yo Shayna, love your story there… I’ve had the same feeling on mini-retirements… I feel really disconnected when I’m not doing work.

Buy now blogging just gives you advanced analytics– you’ll actually see conversions and talk to real customers from the beginning of your marketing efforts– that won’t take away the uncertainty, my sense is 9/10 you’ll still be wondering how things will play out, you’ll just have higher quality data from real customers.